


Human By Night

by aletheakatherine



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Dystopia, F/M, Fantasy, Included Mild Language and Scenes of Violence. Viewers Discretion is Advised., Magic, Science Fiction, War, Western, Zombie, Zombie Apocalypse, future earth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2018-12-04 00:33:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11543712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletheakatherine/pseuds/aletheakatherine
Summary: they call them the undead, these creatures that walk into a human body and replace their mind with a foreign one.  but the eena are not undead - they are not the zombies of myth and legend.  they are something else, alien and strange, and nobody knows exactly what that means.when the eena come to take souls, even the junkers who raid the cities become friends to the people.  it’s all a matter of the humans against the shadows.  in the darkest times, even mortal enemies will become lifelong allies, and the balance of the world will change.





	1. the day we died 0.0

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shadows_of_a_Dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadows_of_a_Dream/gifts).



I will never forget the exact moment it happens.

Or maybe it’s not _when_ it happens, so much as _how_ it happens. It’s a normal day - it should be a normal day. Dust on the cracked white porcelain of the sink, mold growing in the niches and corners and jagged lines. The sunlight slanting through the window in long planes that stream down across the pale of the floor. The television blaring loudly in the other room above the clink of beer bottles and the wailing sobs of the baby. The rag in my hands is stained with rust from who knows what, but I scrub the dishes with it anyway. My fingers hurt from the work.

Momma never does anything anymore. Ever since the man she loved ended up in jail over an android trafficking scandal, she’s given up on life. You can tell just from glancing at her. Her eyes - sunken, dark, almost black with exhaustion. Her cheekbones - high ridges that jut out ruggedly from the sullen pits of her cheeks. Her fingers, once-nimble, now long and bony and jagged. Her hair, like a tattered curtain, greasy and dark and hanging in uneven tangles.

Her voice grates, too. It’s not from being thirsty, I think, because she’s always got a beer bottle in hand, and new ones collect on the floor - a dozen a day. She can’t be thirsty. But she sounds parched whenever she talks, and her lips crack every time she speaks, spilling long trickles of blood that run down to her chin. What do I know? Maybe she is thirsty. I’ve got no idea what’s in those bottles. I don’t even know if beer quenches thirst. I have to stay away from alcohol myself. I’m the only working one in the family, anyway - little Elsie is too young to help out yet. And the baby, Sara, is still in diapers, with a pacifier firmly in her mouth.

It’s a normal day. The baby cries. Momma drinks. The television blares. Elsie does nothing. And I work.

It’s been quiet down-road, but that isn’t too surprising. There’s been an outbreak of junkers lately, and everybody’s hiding inside - windows shuttered, doors locked. It’s never fun when they come snooping around insisting that whatever’s there is worth salvaging for themselves - including the house - and that it’s worth it to you to give it to them...for free. The worst part is that they’re right, it usually is worth it to you. But that’s only because they always bring guns when they come.

What? They’re perfectly friendly.

I can see one of them now when I peek out through the blinds on the window in front of me. The window pane is just about the only new thing around here - it’s one of those souped-up ones that’s extra thick, courtesy of the city, because they’ve gotten too many deaths from radiation exposure, and it’s given them a bad name. The nice side effect is that the glass stops bullets better - at least the weak ones the junkers shoot. And that makes it harder for them to break in. Almost impossible, in fact.

Sometimes I think the radiation was just a hoax. A hoax the scientists pulled to get the government to keep us safe from the junkers. I can't exactly complain. The thick windows make me happy.

The junker outside looks pretty normal, for a junker. Hoodie pulled up over his face, dark goggles in place, head-to-toe clothing that shimmers in the heat. His hands are gloved and grimy, glittering with grit and sticky residue. He prowls slowly from house to house, looking for an easy target. Most of the people here have learned to keep their stuff inside. Some, though, aren’t so wise - or so savvy. And this one definitely means business - I can see the outline of his gun jutting underneath his clothes, bigger than the pistols they usually carry.

I watch him for a bit, more out of curiosity than of wariness. My hands scrub and scrub with the rag. The water runs at a low growl, steaming into the dirty basin. The television sputters, and Momma calls out that it’s broken down - again. I roll my eyes. The television seems to “break down” about six times a day, and I’m always the one called in to un-break it. You’d think she’d have learned the remote controls by now.

I walk into the living room, step over the bottles cluttered around the sofa. Momma looks like she’s about to fall asleep, and at first I’m not sure why - until I notice it’s strangely warm in here.

Warm.

I look around. Warm. But the conditioning system is set low. Low enough that earlier, Momma was complaining it was frigid. And...well, unless the conditioning system is broken - which it isn’t, from the sound of it, the way the vents hiss - then the only reason it could be warm is…

The door’s open. Back door. Never would’ve noticed it, except Momma called me in here. I thank her silently for being a dumbass.

I’m about to close and lock it when I suddenly think of something. I was in the kitchen the whole time, and Momma clearly hasn’t moved, judging from the way the bottles are piled on her lap. And I know that the door was locked tight all last night. Which means someone besides me or her opened it. And the baby couldn't possibly -

“Elsie?”

No answer. Little Sara whines, and Momma stares obtusely at the television. My heartbeat picks up a pace.

“Elsie…”

Elsie ignores Momma usually. But she likes me. She answers me. The silence...it could be anything - maybe she’s in her room dozing and can’t hear me, or she’s distracted by something else - but it makes me nervous. On edge. My instincts tell me something’s wrong. My gut clenches tight with worry, and my mouth feels suddenly drier than Momma’s cracked lips, and my heartbeat is racing like no junker buggy ever raced before, and -

I grab the long rifle from its place next to the door. It used to be Daddy’s, but now it’s mine, my favorite from his whole collection. It’s got a perfect balance. Weighty enough to feel substantial, but not so heavy that it bogs me down. It feels smooth in my fingers - smooth and streamlined. The only elegant thing in this whole damned city. I take it with me whenever I go out - as a precaution, and to warn everybody around me that I’m not to be messed with. Go rape another girl. Not me. Not tonight. I’m more trouble than it’s worth.

There’s a wire fence around the back yard. Doesn’t do much to keep anybody out, but at least it acts as a sort of warning - not so much to other people, but to ourselves. Don’t go outside this boundary without the gun. Without a sober head and your wits about you.

Elsie knows that, so I scan the back yard first, looking - but she isn’t anywhere to be found. There’s plenty of hiding places out here, but I know them all, and my instincts tell me she isn’t here, anyway. Plus she would’ve heard my voice when I called her, if she were just out here, right behind the door.

I’ve barely made it beyond the fence when I see him. The junker. Except he isn’t a junker. I know he isn’t, because he’s let his hood down, and his face...it isn’t normal. It isn’t even quite human.

It’s rotting. Like a decomposing body. Like someone who’s dead. But this thing - this man - is definitely alive.

I bite down on my lip and raise the gun. It should be enough to tell him to stop - but he just keeps coming, his eyes fixed on me. They’re huge. Glassy. He hunches as he walks, almost like an old man. Something drips from his hands - white hands, not gloved anymore. A shred of pink fabric hangs from the edge of his mouth.

Pink. Pink fabric.

No.

Pink...pink is Elsie’s favorite color. She was wearing a pink skirt today. Light pink. Same exact shade as the -

No. No. I won’t believe. I physically _can’t_. My brain abhors the thought, rejects it out of instinct. My gut, though -

I stare at him again. And then...then he says something to me.

“Joanna,” he says.

_In Elsie’s voice._

I shriek. The trigger of the gun, hard in my trembling hands, feels like it’s being pulled by somebody else - but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that the bullet’s gone through his head, and he’s crumpling, crumpling -

That’s when the rest of them come pouring towards me, blood dripping from their mouths...and the only thing I can think is -

Zombies.


	2. the day we died 0.1

My hands shake. The gun trembles in my fingers, firing bullet after bullet, but it doesn’t do much, not like this. All it does is make them angry. Makes them stop a moment to stare at their newly dead comrades, then come at me twice as fast as before. My only saving grace is that most of them don’t seem to have guns. Lucky. Lucky, _lucky_ me.

I hear my daddy’s voice in my head. Cut the bullshit, Joanna. You aren’t lucky and you know it.

I’m not lucky. I wasn’t born with luck. But I doubt anybody is, because everybody who’s claimed so in the past ended up dead, in my experience. I don’t think that exactly counts as luck.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about this now. It helps calm my nerves, maybe. What I _should_ be thinking about is the ever growing group of undeads, because every time I kill the four standing in front of me, more come from between the buildings, like piranhas to flesh.

I’m running out of bullets. It’s an idle thought, but it holds a lot of weight, a lot of implications. Once I run out… what the hell will I do? I haven’t got a plan. There hasn’t been time to think up one.

The sun beats down on my tanned skin, and the bullets fly like rain - all the way down to the last one - and I am eerily peaceful. All of this is surreal. The pink fabric, the zombie saying my name in Elsie’s voice, the dead junker alive. It’s all so impossible that if I pretend hard enough, I can imagine it’s just a bad dream. Just a nightmare.

It makes it easier.

It makes it easier when I hear my name - this time in my momma’s voice - and the baby crying, and the slam of a door that makes the infant wails suddenly ten times quieter. It makes it easier when the gun, empty, slips from my hands and the flood of zombies surges suddenly forward. It makes it easier when I turn and catch sight of the junkers biking down the roadway.

Probably zombie junkers, I think. Real ones, at this rate, would actually be welcome. I must say it out loud, because Momma laughs a low, rugged laugh at me.

“ _Bullshit_ , Joanna,” I hear my momma say, from just behind me. She’s brought a machine gun from the house, and it’s in her hands now, looming over me like a shadow of a monster. “Zombies don’t exist.”

“They do now,” I say, against the creeping disbelief that makes my stomach tie itself into a knot. Instinctively, I’ve ducked low to the ground, my arms over my head as the gun spits bullets forward, into the flood of dead-alive bodies. I can feel the gravel kicking up against my belly.

Momma doesn’t reply. I get the feeling that if she had time, she’d explain, because it doesn’t make sense she’d deny zombies when they’re right in front of her, coming at her with big butcher’s knives in their bloodied hands. But she doesn’t have time. Neither of us have time. Time is running out.

“Joanna,” she says, her voice rough. She flicks her eyes over to me to catch my gaze, then back to the things in front of her.

I swallow. My legs hurt from crouching and my mouth tastes like sandpaper, but at least I’m not hurt - _yet._ “What?”

“I want you to run,” she says, shouting so I can hear the way her voice roughens, gravelly and low. Her gun jerks around, swatting one of the _things_ in the head, taking it out with a huge, ugly _krkk_ . “I want you to run -” and she jerks her chin towards the undead - “ _that_ way.”

She’s crazy. She’s fucking crazy. My own mother is gonna sacrifice me to a load of flesh eating monsters, just to save herself, and - well, and it might not even work. Maybe I won’t be enough to stop them from being hungry. Maybe they’ll eat her too -

That thought makes me want to laugh.

I look back towards the house. It’s just a short sprint away. There’s only a couple dozen undead in total, and the flood from between the bullrings seems to have stopped, so if I’m lucky -

But she can’t fend off the junkers too, can she? There’s at least four dozen of them, from what I can see, flooding from in between the buildings, circling around on their bikes, engines roaring. I don’t know what they want or why they’re here, but I’m guessing they’re only here for bad reasons.

She hits the last undead over the head, and he - she? it? - crumples to the ground. “ _Run!_ ” she screams at me again, like I’m going to listen. Like I didn’t hear her the first time.

She’s using me as bait for the junkers, to lead them away from the house. They love their raids. They love hunting people even better.

I turn, and sprint towards the house. She yells at me again, but I don’t give a damn. She can yell all she wants. I’m not gonna be bait for a troupe of junkers. She can try it herself if she wants.

“ _Joanna_!”

I shoot a glance back over my shoulder. She’s running towards me, but she’s old and slow, and it takes her forever. By the time she reaches the house, the junkers will be on us, clustered in the space between our house and the one across the way. I slip inside and lock the door tight, pulling another one of Daddy’s old guns off the wall. The baby bawls. Outside, the junkers’ engines cut out, silent. I move to the window to watch, push the shades aside so the sunlight burns at my face.

The junkers stand in a circle, still straddling their bikes. Momma’s in the middle, the gun on the ground at her feet, gleaming black in the sunlight. Besides that, there’s no sign of life. None of the neighbors dares peek out to watch. Of course they don’t. Better not to tempt the junkers.

One of them pokes at her with the butt of a gun. She takes an unsteady step back, almost falls flat on her ass, but one of the burlier ones reaches forward and tips her back onto her feet. The junkers gesture at the house.

After a moment, Momma nods. They take the gun from her. She starts walking towards the house.

What in hell is she doing? Did they just let her go like that -

No. Of course they didn’t. They’re following her around the house to the back door. Well… _fuck_.

I shoulder the gun. It feels too big in my arms, unwieldy. It won’t be enough to take the junkers down, but that hardly matters. If I’m gonna die, I wanna do it proudly, with a good fight. I move to the back door, like I’m about to guard it.

The door rattles. When it doesn’t open easily, it’s kicked in. The baby wails again.

The baby. The baby will die -

The junkers come in one by one, almost politely. Momma is in the middle of them. Her eyes flick to me, then to the television. She doesn’t even look apologetic, the bitch.

“You can have the house,” she says, waving her arms. As if she has a choice.

The junkers nod. One of them steps forward.

“Thank you for the offer,” he says. “But we’d rather have your daughter.”

It takes me a moment to realize he doesn’t mean the baby - he means _me_.


	3. the day we died 0.2

There's a silence that lasts a good fifteen seconds, so quiet you can hear the floorboards creak under our weight, so quiet you can almost hear the way my jaw drops open in disbelief.

“You can't have her daughter,” I say. “Her daughter says no.”

If there's one thing junkers don't like, it's being told _no_ . I doubt these ones have ever heard it before, because for a good long minute they seem not to understand what I've said, and then I have to repeat it, hating how thick my voice sounds. “I am _not_ coming with you,” I spit out. I don't care if I make them angry. Maybe the hatred in my voice will obscure the fear veiling my eyes.

“You don't have a choice,” one of the junkers says. His helmet is off, and his eyes are small and black and angry, and I don't like him at all.

“Actually,” I hiss, tipping my gun up to cock it to my head, “I do.”

One of the junkers behind him - I assume it's a girl, based on its build, but its helmet makes it impossible to tell - tenses up like she's going to lift her gun, but the man lifts his hand and she stops. “No,” he says, his voice firm, “you _don't_.”

I swallow. My fingers trembles on the trigger. I'm not scared to do it, I tell myself, and stare him straight in the eyes - and I pull the trigger.

The gun jams.

The gun jams, and then the slender junker is half sprinting forward, knocking it from my hands before I get another chance, and the others are surging forward around me, and Momma is staring, her expression dull. And I fight. I kick, I bite, I scratch, but they have leather gloves and metal armor and fighting does absolutely no good. They're lifting me up and I'm screaming, cursing them, cursing Momma, and they're bearing me out into the hot sun like I'm a prize, a war trophy -

“Stop struggling,” says the junker that took my gun. “It's way easier, trust me.”

I bite out a cuss, but she just laughs. Definitely a girl. Her voice is high and dry, roughened with exasperation. She moves too fluidly for a man. She's too short, too graceful to be a boy. I kick at one of the men holding me and she pokes me with the butt of her gun.

“Stop. Struggling,” she repeats, harsher this time.

I stop. I don't say anything this time.

“We aren't gonna kill you,” she snaps at me. “You're gonna be a junker, like me. So stop acting like a little bitch. We're doing you a favor.”

I don't see how this is a favor. I honestly don't see how this is a favor at all.

“My name is Thalay,” she says, as if she doesn't really care whether or not I'm listening. She says it like tall-ay, drags out the _y_. “T-H-A-L-A-Y. Remember it. I hate when people misspell my name.”

I don't give a shit what your name is, I think, but don't say.

I don't have to say anything, because one of the men scoops me into his arms and dumps me on the back of a bike and ties me down. I strain at the ties, but it's rope, and too thick for me to break. Thalay looks back at me from the bike ahead, but her helmet is like a mirror and I can't see her face at all. A mid sized woman gets on the bike behind me, blonde braids sneaking out beneath the edge of her helmet, and kicks the stand under, her arms reaching forward to the bars.

She revs the engine. It vibrates so much that it makes my teeth chatter against each other, rumbles through my chest and my bones. With a whine, the bike kicks into action, sending sand flying around us, and suddenly we're riding forward with the wind in our faces, teasing tears from my eyes, and I'm glad that I'm tied down, because I'm not sure I'd be able to stay on otherwise.

“Hold on tight,” the woman says, her voice sharp in my ear. She doesn't sound like she comes from around here. Her words tilt at the edges, slightly exotic, like her lips are used to shaping different syllables, and the vowels are shorter, softer than how I'd say them.

I wish abruptly that I had a helmet, like the junkers do. As soon as we're riding full speed, the sand is in my eyes and tearing at my face, and I can feel it burning against my skin, scraping at my chapped lips. My tongue feels too big in my mouth. Dehydrated… I'm dehydrated. I wonder when I last drank, and how much. The water never tastes good at home, but at least it stops me from being thirsty.

We ride past rows and rows of sandy houses with shuttered windows. It's boring. All the same. And then the houses are fading from view and we're out in the desert with the sand biting at our faces, making me cry. I think the girl who took my gun - Thalay, I remember, and promise to pronounce it wrong whenever I get the chance - is snickering at me for it. I scowl at her. It isn't my fucking fault they didn't give me a helmet.

“We need you,” the girl says. “You're the chosen one.”

I look up. My eyes widen. That would explain why they bargained for me, instead of the house. Otherwise, I'm useless to them. It all makes sense… but - “Chosen for _what_?”

Thalay laughs a hard, rough laugh. “Nothing,” she snaps. “I was just shitting you. I haven't got a fucking clue why they want you.”

And just like that, she takes her bike swerving towards the front of the pack, kicking up dust in her wake. The woman behind me, the blonde driving my bike, makes a noise in her throat. “Thalay adores sarcasm,” she says quietly. “I do not approve.”

“Then why didn't you tell her to stop?”

“She wouldn't listen.” Annoyed, the woman kicks at the bike. It makes a guttural sound and surges forward. I shrug.

At some point, I get sleepy. My momma and the baby are behind me, and Ellie is dead, and it suddenly feels like the world no longer has a need for me. So I close my eyes - not for long, just for enough to fight off the exhaustion.

I don't wake up till hours later.


End file.
